1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus such as an ink jet-type recording apparatus and a method of controlling the liquid ejecting apparatus, and particularly to a liquid ejecting apparatus that includes a liquid ejecting head which has a nozzle group arranged with a length corresponding to the maximum width of a landing target of a liquid and ejects the liquid from a nozzle of the liquid ejecting head while transporting the landing target and to a method of controlling the liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Related Art
A liquid ejecting apparatus includes a liquid ejecting head and ejects (discharges) various liquids from the liquid ejecting head. An example of the liquid ejecting apparatus includes an image recording apparatus such as an ink jet-type printer or an ink jet-type plotter. Recently, the liquid ejecting apparatus has been applied to various manufacturing apparatuses due to its characteristics of being capable of causing a very small amount of liquid to land to a predetermined position with accuracy. For example, the liquid ejecting apparatus is applied to a display manufacturing apparatus that manufactures a color filter such as a liquid crystal display, an electrode producing apparatus that produces an electrode, such as an organic electro luminescence (EL) display or a surface-emitting display (FED), and a chip manufacturing apparatus that manufactures a bio chip (biochemical component). A recording head for the image recording apparatus ejects liquid-phase ink, and a color-material ejecting head for the display manufacturing apparatus ejects solutions of respective color materials which are red (R), green (G), and blue (G). In addition, an electrode-material ejecting head for the electrode producing apparatus ejects a liquid-phase electrode material and a bio-organic material ejecting head for the chip manufacturing apparatus ejects a solution of bio-organic material.
The liquid ejecting apparatus has various configurations, and yet another configuration has been proposed, in which a liquid ejecting head (line-type liquid ejecting head), of which a full length of nozzles (nozzle rows) that are arranged in a plurality of rows is set to be capable of corresponding to the maximum width of a liquid landing target such as a recording medium, is provided such that the liquid ejecting head does not move over the landing target when ejecting a liquid. According to this configuration, since there is no need to cause the liquid ejecting head to move in the main scanning direction and a landing pattern such as an image can be formed simply by transporting the landing target in the sub scanning direction, it is possible to shorten a processing time compared to a configuration of using a so-called serial head which performs the liquid ejection while the liquid ejecting head performs scanning (for example, see JP-A-2000-280469).
The liquid ejecting head mounted on the liquid ejecting apparatus includes, for example, a piezoelectric element, a heating element, or an electrostatic actuator as a pressure generating unit that causes a pressure change to occur in a liquid inside a pressure chamber which communicates with a nozzle from which the liquid is ejected and ejects the liquid from the nozzle. In the liquid ejecting apparatus, a drive waveform (drive pulse) generated by a drive signal generator is applied to the pressure generating unit and thereby the pressure generating unit is driven, which causes the liquid to be ejected. In a configuration in which a landing pattern is formed on the landing target simply by transporting the landing target in the sub scanning direction with no movement of the liquid ejecting head over the landing target of the liquid, the liquid ejecting apparatus causes the drive waveform to be generated at a timing based on position information generated in accordance with the transporting of the landing target so as to cause the liquid to land at an aimed position on the landing target with high accuracy.
Incidentally, in the liquid ejecting apparatus described above, there is a concern that behavior of a meniscus in a nozzle may be disturbed due to residual vibration after ejection of the liquid, which affects the subsequent ejection operation of the liquid. Therefore, in a normal design of the liquid ejecting apparatus, a generation timing of the drive waveform (that is, ejection timing of the liquid) and a transporting speed of the landing target are adjusted such that the effect of the residual vibration is as little as possible. In some cases, a user of the liquid ejecting apparatus (particularly, liquid ejecting apparatus for business use) causes the ejection to be performed at a timing which is not an optimal timing described above by increasing a transporting speed of the landing target in order to further increase a liquid ejection processing speed or the like, depending on a purpose. Thus, according to the timing, the ejection of the liquid becomes unstable due to the residual vibration as described above in some cases.